You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Published in 2019, this deceptively small volume is a rich source for understanding the significance of the Hietzing School, founded in 1927 Vienna by Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham and Anna Freud. The lengthy introduction and nine essays powerfully convey the actual lived experiences of both students and teachers at this progressive school, whose mission was to apply psychoanalytic principles to education. The goal was to promote the well-being of the whole child, which the school attempted to do by providing an enhanced, enriched, psychoanalytically informed learning environment for its students. In addition, most of the students were simultaneously in psychoanalysis with members of the school’s faculty, including some of their own teachers. The mission of the school was also facilitated by its small size, with the student body no larger than twenty.
The reader gains a broad understanding of the school’s historic significance in both the evolution of child psychoanalysis and the emergence of modern, progressive theories of education. Furthermore, we have an opportunity to learn about the actual personalities of and relationships among many of the school’s faculty, all of whom later became internationally recognized figures making major contributions to the evolution of psychoanalytic theory and practice. And finally, these essays as a whole portray the painful years during which Vienna was transformed by Fascism from a progressive, sophisticated city, in which social problems were being addressed and culture flourished, into the capital of a totalitarian, fascist regime from which many of these psychoanalytic innovators were forced to flee (see Gardiner, 1983).
The collection is edited by Elizabeth Danto, an expert in the history of psychoanalysis who specializes in the period between the two world wars. Her publications include Freud’s Free Clinics – Psychoanalysis and Social Justice, 1918 – 1938 (Danto, 2007), in which she discusses many of the themes which are addres